


stand firm

by superbayern



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Old work, a little sad, idk what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 17:25:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12822423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superbayern/pseuds/superbayern
Summary: thomas holds onto mario tighter than an octopus would, and the rest of the world is along for the rideor: mario and thomas through their bayern years and one bonus





	1. Chapter 1

Thomas is nineteen when Mario first dons Bayern colors. 

 

Tracing his way through the clubhouse, he stumbles across the Bavarian, sprawled on the couch, staring at the ceiling, arms thrown carelessly behind golden hair. He’s talking, though Mario knows not to who, and there is a certain level of hilarity that bubbled up in Mario as this curly-haired stranger begins a passionate discourse on horse breeding with seemingly no-one.

 

“Excuse me,” Mario interjects.

 

Bright, bright blue eyes turn, and perhaps the scariest smile spreads against a youthful face. “Mario Gomez, no?” he says, bounding over in quick leaps. In seconds, he’s attached himself to Mario’s arm, navigating him out of the lounge and through the halls. “I know you. That is, I’ve seen you play. You’re quite good, and I’ll admit I was ecstatic when I heard you were coming. A true German, say, I’ll have to teach you cards. I always lose, maybe you’ll change that,” he chatters until they’ve come in front of the locker rooms.

 

“Hm,” Mario mutters noncommittally, wondering how a grip could possibly be so tight. 

 

“I’m so excited, you see, I’m new too. Well, not so new, but new, that’s for sure. You know what I mean?” he babbles. “I’m so excited.” 

 

“Thomas,” a stern voice emanates from behind the two. Louis Van Gaal smiles benevolently at the blond-- _ Thomas _ \-- and beckons towards Mario. Turning, he opens his mouth to make a half-hearted remark towards the energetic youth, but Thomas seems to have already bounded away, attaching himself to another harried looking man.

 

Thomas, Mario soon finds out, is a Munich man, born and bred mere kilometers from the southern city, only nineteen and a fresh-face like him. He soon learns why when Thomas manages to tangle his legs together in a ghastly run on the pitch.

 

Everybody seems to wince at that, or they do until Thomas manages to flop onto the ball and send it careening into the bottom right corner past the goalkeeper.

 

Thomas, Mario marvels, is a one of a kind. 

 

And so it comes as a further surprise when he first propositions Mario, and he marvels in the tenderness of Thomas’s collar, the quiet which he punctuates with soft whimpers. 

There is no wildness to Thomas outside of  Saebener Strasse, no wailing incognizance or howls of mirth, just a warm, wet mouth and blue, blue eyes glistening with emotions Mario can’t quite distinguish. 

 

_ No,  _ Mario realizes in the morning luminescence cast by snowfall. Not so blue, for one is lighter than the other, and with a laugh to himself, he realizes that everything about this boy is mismatched.

 

And to pacify himself, it is just something,  _ nothing,  _ between two friends, he insists, but Thomas, in his ever present ebullience, wraps long, fragile arms around Mario’s shoulders and presses sloppy kisses to the sides of Mario’s face, and Mario lets himself grow attached if only because this city is cold, and there is nothing else for him here.

 

And at night, Thomas entwined himself around him, pressing into each groove and arching against each bone until Mario can feel the rabbit-paced heartbeat thrumming in a delicate chest like a pacemaker to the speed at which Thomas passes life. At day, he is a ghost away, all draping arms and gangly knees tracing the patterns at which Mario runs, insistent on chasing him to the point where he doesn’t know if he is running from or with the Bavarian. 

 

“He’ll wear off,” Micha says with a smile and sharp eyes as Mario extricates himself from an enveloping grasp. 

 

To which, Thomas litters kisses across his collarbone and murmurs promises of an eternity spent, suspended in cold winters and red, red nights.

 

There is something alien about the Bavarian, cutting intelligence ensconced in languor, and this Thomas looks like another star woven into the titanium arches of this pitch with a sloppiness that adds charm to his crookedness.

 

So when the  _ other Mario _ , as Thomas deigns to call him, comes to Bayern, Thomas is twenty one and more raucous than ever as he absorbs the Croatian. Mario calls him something different in the caverns of his mind, because he can see it as it is, through the veil of civility, for this man is his replacement, intended in mind and soul.

 

And for a moment, Mario blazes as bright as Thomas, furious as Heynckes turns away from him, and he knows that is is time to leave; his time at Bayern is over, and he would throw it away for Italy or Spain or England if only he could be seen.

 

Then Thomas presses himself  against Mario in the night, draped in sheets, breaths shallow, absorbing Mario's slow heartbeats with a sloppy mouth, and Mario forces himself to don red once more if only for the Munich man,

 

Perhaps he underestimated Thomas the whole time, Mario thinks bitterly on a bitterly cold night, as Thomas pauses in his artless kissing and meets his gaze. “Will you leave?” he asks in a breathless tone.

 

“What?” Mario asks.

 

“Bayern. You ought to leave.” Thomas presses a soft kiss to his throat and mumbles in vibrations. “You’re not happy, are you?”

 

And for once in his twenty-seven-so years, Mario knows not what to say.

 

“No,” he finally manages. “I’m not.” 

 

Leave, he does, ousted, disfavored, and even Thomas with his soulful eyes cannot convince the board to keep him. 

 

There is something desperate to their love now: Thomas with his panicked eyes burns, faster than before in these last days as they play for European glory, burning through his lifeline with a fervency unparalleled, and for once, Mario doesn’t grip Thomas to slow him. He grips to hold on, fingertips leaving bruises around jutting hips and sharp shoulders at night when all he can see are two feral eyes gleaming in the dark. 

 

But, like all things Mario has ever loved: Bayern, Thomas, football, he cannot hold on forever. And although he still has a month left before he ought to leave for Italy, he flies to Fiorentina the next day if only to know that there is still some semblance of a choice left.


	2. Chapter 2

They find themselves alone, together, years later, in a bright Die Mannschaft hotel.

 

There is nothing romantic to the silence, Mario observes. Nothing idealistic, organic, or fluid to the quiet that settles over the elevator as they ride up.

 

“The fifth floor?” he says, making conversation in the abscesses of Thomas’s usual chatter.

 

Those blue eyes, one ever so miscoloured, flash to him before back to the glossy screen of his phone.

 

“Wolfsburg?” is the only reply, lilting and flippant against the harsh thrum of the elevator gears.

 

“Never was a Bayern man like you.”

 

And for a man who has never been aware of spatiality and the dimensions of distance, there is such an aching gap between what he left in Munich and what returns from Munich now, that perhaps even a hand would be incapable of bridging it.

 

“Never was,” the Bavarian echoes.

 

The sharp ding signals sliding doors, and Thomas ambles backwards, feet tripping over each other out the sliding elevator doors. The old smile is back, with a smattering of wrinkles that weren’t there when Mario last saw: stretched to edge in the last word.

 

“It’s a good thing we’re both Mannschaft men then.”


End file.
